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Food
Foods of the Realm The most popular “meat” animals (as opposed to pigeons, grouse, wild turkeys, chickens, and other meat birds, which are wing-clipped and reared in large penned-in flocks in many places) in Faerûn are, in descending order of popularity: 1. sheep 2. goats 3. rothé in the North, but cows south of the northern border of Amn, and including Cormyr, the Dales, Sembia and the Vast (and south of those places). Alpaca- and llama-like creatures are kept in northern Rashemen and points east of there, plus sprinklings all over cold, mountainous regions throughout the Realms. 4. hogs and boar. The popularity of sheep and goats is due to their relative hardiness, small and manageable size (it’s easier to lift them out of chasms, carry injured ones, shut them inside a structure with a human family of nights when wolves or other predators are prowling, and so on), and ability to forage on rougher terrain than cows (goats in particular will eat almost anything; like hogs, they can be used as a garbage disposal) Hoondatha, mules or donkeys are most often put in with herds of other grazing beasts, to protect them against coyotes, wolves, wild dogs, etc. Alpacas tend to find the Dales humid and overheated, insect-infested agony in summer. My notes (drawn of course from Ed's utterances, during play) tell me that alpacas WERE kept in some of the "enclosures" in the Citadel of the Raven, as meat beasts, though. Torm briefly hid amongst them once to avoid being discovered, and had some uncomplimentary remarks to make, afterwards, about their dung. The severe climate of the North means very little fresh fruit is available in winter (after freeze-up, when ships stop sailing into Waterdeep and other ports) except in processed (jams, brandies, pickled or honeyed) form. Berries (literally hundreds of different sorts) and apples are the main fruit native to the North. There’s also a savoury (not sweet) fruit native to, and cultivated in, the North known as the sarsae. Sarsae are tough-skinned and hardy, with a mottled green skin that darkens from yellow-white as it ripens, firm yellow-white flesh similar to that of some real-world apples, and an almost cheese-like, but tart, taste. Sarsae are used as we real-world folk would use tomatoes, and vary widely in size depending on how wet the warm growing months are, and how much sun they get (edible, unshrivelled sarsae may be as small as real-world golf balls, or as large as real-world volleyballs, with most of them being about the size of a softball). One curiosity of the North is ‘firefruit’ (sometimes called ‘amberglows’). These are small, succulent golden berries, very hard-skinned but filled with a semi-liquid as sweet as honey but fruity in flavour, that grow every three or four years on certain mosses and lichens, when these growths flower. Most mosses and lichens never bear such fruit, and only rangers and other experts on the flora of the area are usually able to tell which of the rare sorts of fungi will bear firefruit. When seen, protruding from hair-thin stalks out of the scabrous fungi, they can be eaten with surety, because there’s nothing poisonous or inedible that looks like firefruit. Another culinary peculiarity of the North are ‘snowberries,’ which grow in profusion in the Fallen Lands and near Glister in the Moonsea North, but can be found everywhere in the Sword Coast North. Heavily grazed by birds and animals of all sorts, these aren’t a single variety of fruit but rather a rangers’ (and Uthgardt barbarians’) classification of many sorts of vines and bushes whose berries remain quite pleasant and edible when frozen - - and so can readily be eaten when found under ice and snow in the howling hearts of winter blizzards. Many larders in the North, Sword Coast, and Heartlands hold wax-sealed jars of apple and berry jams and jellies, marmalade, pickled whole quinces and lemons (chopped up and used in cooking; almost never eaten whole, and honeyed figs. Ships bring all of these processed foods (usually in large barrels, with the jarring being done in the ports where the ships unload) from warmer climes, and also bring fresh fruit in season. One of the most popular such fruit - - popular because it travels so well (resisting rot and bruising, and is little loved by shipboard rats, hence only lightly nibbled), AND because it has such a long growing season, with fruits ripening for use from Flamerule through Marpenoth - - is the tammar, native to Calimshan, the hills around the Lake of Steam, and the Border Kingdoms. Tammar are small, round, hard fruit (about the size of a lacrosse or squash ball). The pink (when unripe) to crimson (when ripe; they go black when overripe) peel or rind is inedible and very hard to ‘knocks,’ but can readily be cut and then peeled (slowly, in a spiral one-layer-after-another tearing open) to reveal firm, chewy pink flesh that tastes something like real-world tangerines or clementines. This flesh is juicy when chewed, but isn’t as ‘wet’ with running juice when revealed as that of tangerines or clementines, and is split into only four segments (more like ‘buds’ of garlic in sturdiness and shape than the many smaller lobes of most real-world citrus fruit). A lime-like fruit called a ‘quace’ is also abundant in the coastlands of the Shining Sea (in other words, in all the areas the tammar flourishes in plus Lapaliiya and the Tashalar), but is very easily bruised and very strong (acidic) in taste. Except in various bottled sauces, it’s little known in the North. ‘Ockles’ in Waterdeep are oranges from the Shining South coasts (that is, Estagund, Durpar, and thereabouts) that grow in long strings of attached globes, looking more like strands of pearls than fruit. Except for this configuration, they pretty much ARE what we real-world eaters would recognize as oranges. All over the southern lands, pomegranates grow wild, and are sometimes shipped to the Heartlands and the Sword Coast North when a ship has extra space (they command low prices, but can be picked almost for free throughout the warm lands (the Shaar, of course, excluded); many southerners boil them to make sauces or dyes rather than eating them as fruit). In the Realms, however, the word ‘pomegranate’ is unknown; to folk of Faerun, these are ‘araed’ (as with sarsae, tammar, and quace, singular and plural the same; thus, ‘a basket of araed’ and ‘I ate an araed’ or ‘Cut up two araed’). The other fruit imported into the Sword Coast lands and Heartlands from late summer to freeze-up (most of them can be kept for some months, if buried under earth or leaf mulch in a cool cellar to keep them from freezing) are melons of various sorts. The most popular three types of melons are ramrath, mritha-fruit, and tlarm-melons. The ramrath is a reddish, round (volleyball-sized) melon grown in the Tashalar. Its flesh is firm and scarlet, and it can be used as we use watermelons, or sliced and fried (with the rind removed) to make a slab-of-cake-like fruit served on platters topped with desserts (confections of creams and syrups and more decorative fruit). Never say “ramraths,” by the way, unless you really mean to. ‘Ramrath’ is the plural form of the fruit, whereas ‘ramraths’ is a euphemism for human breasts (both female and the large pectorals possessed by fat men). Many shiploads of mritha-fruit and tlarm-melons are exported from Lundeth. Mritha-fruit are very like apples, but with sweet, acidic citrus-like juices at their hearts. Their skins are pale pink, and grow many reddish streaks and mottlings as they ripen. They can be eaten at any stage from pink to when they become ‘all over red,’ and although their early edibility has nourished many hungry Northerners who eagerly buy them from the first shipcaptains to brave breakup (of the sea-ice), most folk swear by the rich, strong, almost (black) licorice taste they get, from Eleasias on, when fully reddened. Tlarm-melons are large, oval, green with streaks of darker green (think real-world watermelons in outer size and hue) fruit that have golden-yellow flesh. They taste almost like real-world rhubarb (which, by the way, is also found growing wild in abundance, in the Heartlands), and have very thick white inedible rinds that can be boiled down to make a glue or caulking, and that keep them very well protected against bruising and rotting. Tlarm-melons ripen late (Eleint), but are so numerous then that tlarm-flesh alone could feed almost everyone in the North (though they’d soon be sick of a steady diet of only tlarm, of course) if some way could be found to ship it all. Many farmers along the Shining South coasts gorge themselves on tlarm-melons, fill their cellars with tlarm-preserves, compete with each other to make tlarm soups and stews that taste like something else - - and still have wagonloads of tlarm that they plow under as fertilizer. That’s one of the reasons that the South is where spices are big business (and a wide variety of strong spices are gleamed from local plants). Fire Element Infused Wheat Unlike standard wheat, this variety requires ash laden soil (possibly ash from volcanoes on the Elemental Plane of Fire) and an especially warm environment, but rewards the effort with wheat possessing an especially smokey flavor that is prized amongst nobility. Silverwheat A silver-colored wheat. More nutritious that your standar wheat. Can be used to make waybread/lembas sort of food. Morning Mist is a bottle full of scintillating mist, sold in a big, round bottle from which you suck it, a little like pipe smoke. It is actually made from three things: the protoplasm-fog of the ethereal plane, condensed dreams from the Dreamscape (where else) and just a little essence of a ghost. The Nathri invented it first, for shamanic rituals. It's a strong hallucinogen, leaving you knocked-out and dreaming for hours. Blood Fungus An exotic kind of truffle that grew underground. It was white on the outside, and named for its gooey red center. Think of a jelly donut, but with a different flavor and consistency. It was best fried. Also, fried centipede on a stick was a nice treat in the underdark. Dwarvendirk A particularly stiff, pointy, and hard to eat underground root plant that makes a great wine that gives a +2 CON bonus for two hours when properly prepared. Renan Conch. A delicious snail who's blood is used for tattoos, magical ink, and contact poisons that cause paralysis and horrible, horrible pain. King Umberhulkcrab Saald Salad Beholder Float Roast Pulled Krenshaw Rack of Raksasha Skewered Bone Devil Gob-KabobGoblin Dragon Sausage, Dragon Steak, Dragon Roast, Dragon Stew Chimera Meat Pizza, three kinds of meat from one creature Pancakes Category:Foods